Childe Hassam, April Showers, Champs Elysees, Paris, 1888
Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC
She is caught momentarily transfixed,
her hurried errand abruptly paused
at the sight of a flock of men in the rain.
The horse-drawn carriage is dark bedecked
with a bristling cluster of black umbrellas,
a melancholy parade for a soul unknown.
There is no music, no drum, no chant
aside from the clop clop of the horses’ hooves,
punctuated by an occasional splash
of puddles, or tears, or color –
the flower in her bonnet the only red
in a day given over to more somber hues.
(Context: this is one of the poems I’ve written based on works of art in museums. – GL)
Storyteller, scholar, consultant. Loving son, husband and father. Kindhearted mischief-maker.
I'm the Director of the Games and Simulation program at Miami University in Ohio, where I am also an Assistant Professor in the College of Creative Arts' Emerging Technology in Business and Design department. I'm also the director of Miami's Worldbuilding and Narrative Design Research Laboratory (WNDRLab). I have a Master's in Comparative Media Studies from MIT and a PhD in Media Arts and Practices from the University of Southern California.
In past lives I've been the lead Narrative Producer for Microsoft Studios and cofounder of its Narrative Design team, working on projects like Hololens, Quantum Break and new IP incubation; in a "future of media" think tank for Microsoft's CXO/CTO and its Chief Software Architect; the Creative Director for the University of Southern California's World Building Media Lab and the Technical Director, Creative Director and a Research Fellow for USC's Annenberg Innovation Lab; a Visiting Assistant Professor at Whittier College and director of its Whittier Other Worlds Laboratory (WOWLab); the Communications Director and a researcher for the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab; a founding member of the Convergence Culture Consortium at MIT (now The Futures of Entertainment); a magazine editor; and a award-winning short film producer. more »
The opinions put forward in this blog are mine alone, and do not reflect the opinions of my employers.
